DNS Related question help needed soon.

[Kevin Darcy]

You've got the sequence down basically correct. I wouldn't worry about
authenticating your NIC changes -- AFAIK, none of the registrars
authenticate by source address anyway, so as long as your
email-verification/password/key/whathaveyou works, then the changes
should go through.

You can reduce the TTLs on your address records in order to make them
more volatile and therefore make the server available sooner after the
move. How low should they be? Depends on how quickly you want your server
available after the move, on the one hand, and, on the other, how
tolerant your new ISP is of increased DNS traffic in the interim. It's a
tradeoff.

I wouldn't necessarily bother with reducing the TTLs on your NS records
-- other nameservers will "refresh" their cached NS RRsets with records
from your nameservers' responses (assuming that your nameservers and
theirs are running reasonable nameserver implementations), regardless of
what the TTLs are set to, and in any case, you can't change the
TTL values on the delegation records, so it'll be 2 days (the standard
TTL value of gTLD delegation records) after the TLD servers are updated
before you can guarantee that everyone will be using the new servers
exclusively anyway...


- Kevin

George R. Kasica wrote:

> Hello:
>
> I realize this may not be the perfect newsgroup to do this in but I'm
> not sure what's better...and folks here seem to know what they're
> talking about so here goes:
>
> In about 7 days I will be physically moving our one and only server
> from Waukesha to Jackson WI and also changing ISPs as well. The new
> ISP is willing to start doing DNS Secondary for us as of now, before
> the move with our old IP Addresses while we are still physically
> connected to the old ISP.
>
> Once we move the server the IPs will change. What is the best process
> to minimize down time and loss of connectivity. Its not a huge
> environment but about a dozen small domains and 50 or so users.
>
> The part thats confusing me is the WHOIS info at Network Solutions...I
> can't update it once we move since the IPs will change and they mail
> will not go through to be approved...so what would be the sequence for
> this?? Does WHOIS info affect the "REAL" DNS Structure or is it just a
> Database?
>
> I'm guessing:
>
> 1) RIGHT NOW update WHOIS and DNS with NEW name server info leaving
> the old IPS for Primary DNS and possibly cut down various timeouts
> (how much is what I need to know) so that the old ISP DNS is out of
> the picture.
>
> 2) At the time of the move put the NEW DNS tables in place and restart
> named so that it refreshes the NEW ISPs tables with the new values for
> NS and IP addresses.
>
> 3) Plug in and power up machine with new IPs on the various interfaces
> and programs.
>
> 4) Second WHOIS Update to reflect the NEW IP values??
>
> Is that close to right or am I making major errors??
>
> Here is an example of our current DNS files, what SHOULD I be setting
> the timeouts for to minimize downtime and how should the NS records
> look for both old and new?
>
> The NEW DNS and IP are is as follows:
> eagle.netwrx1.com       156.46.225.18
> ns.hnet.net             156.46.108.2
> commerce.hnet.net       156.46.108.6
>
> Exiting DNS Table is:
>
> $TTL    1d
> @       IN      SOA             eagle.netwrx1.com.
> georgek.netwrx1.com. (
>                                 2001052401              ; Serial
> number
>                                 3h                      ; Refresh
> every 3 hours
>                                 1h                      ; Retry every
> 1 hour
>                                 7d                      ; Expire every
> 7 days
>                                 1d )                    ; Minimum 1
> day
> ;
>                         NS      eagle.netwrx1.com.
>                         NS      sec1.dns.psi.net.
>                         NS      sec2.dns.psi.net.
>                         MX      10 eagle.netwrx1.com.
>                         MX      20 relay.smtp.psi.net.
> ;
> eagle.netwrx1.com.      LOC     42 59 13 N 88 12 01 W 274m
> netwrx1.com.            LOC     42 59 13 N 88 12 01 W 274m
>
> ;
> netwrx1.com.                            A       156.46.206.66
> gate                                    A       156.46.206.65
> eagle                                   A       156.46.206.66
> notebook1                               A       156.46.206.67
> notebook2                               A       156.46.206.68
> netwrx1-ptr                             A       156.46.206.69
> ;
> www                                     A       156.46.206.66
> ftp                                     A       156.46.206.66
> mail                                    A       156.46.206.66
> smtp                                    A       156.46.206.66
> pop                                     A       156.46.206.66
> news                                    A       156.46.206.66
> irc                                     A       156.46.206.66
> cvs                                     A       156.46.206.66
>
> ===[George R. Kasica]===        +1 262 513 8503
> President                       +1 206 374 6482 FAX
> Netwrx Consulting Inc.          Waukesha, WI USA
> http://www.netwrx1.com
> georgek at netwrx1.com
> ICQ #12862186